Rorke's Drift

Rorke's Drift, a station on the Tugela River, Zululand, South Africa, memorable for the heroic defence of Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead, with eighty men of the 24th Regiment, who had been left to guard the commissariat stores and the hospital of Lord Chelmsford's force, against 4000 Zulu warriors during the night of the 22-23d January 1879, the night after Isandula. The only defences of the British were an extemporised rampart of rice bags and biscuit boxes, yet they kept the enemy at bay, and six times in succession drove out parties who had got within the barricade.